Ashes 2019 - Test 1, Edgebaston

Booing I

I feel like it is only by a supreme effort of will that I myself don’t boo English players loudly and at every opportunity: walking onto the field, scoring, not scoring, reviewing, ‘milestoning’, walking off the field. If I had the chance to do so without destroying the illusion that I am a grown-up spectator of a genteel game, under the cover of righteousness… well, maybe, maybe not. I honestly think it is more tasteful and honourable to boo gratuitously out of sheer partisan spite than from moral zealotry. The way kiddies at the rugby league leap out of their seats and run to the sideline to boo opposition players trying to convert a try, the most petty and unsporting gesture imaginable, well, it warms the cockles of your heart. Not even kidding.

Booing II

The people booed most at the football are of course the referees and, well, would we... could we? I reckon it would be an implosion of cricket’s self image on the scale of a Bodyline or World Series cricket if the crowd booed the umpires.* Completely inconceivable a week ago, surely still impossible, and yet you can feel the patience wearing dangerously thin. Just as well there is plenty of time to drink restoring cups of tea to soothe the nerves before the next match. And that Joel Wilson won’t take to the field. Wilson's pauses were nothing like the Slow Finger of Doom of a Steve Bucknor or Rudi Koertzen where the decision was quick but the arm raised at the inexorable pace of a 19^th-century bridge. This was just "...... maybe?"

*Also if we adopted the verb “to milestone”.

Redemption I

A redemption narrative is where someone makes up for a wrong with a right. They are supposed however to be the same kind of wrong and right. A moral wrong (like, say… cheating and lying) isn’t ‘redeemed’ by a technical right (like, say… making lots of runs). But moral wrongs like cheating and lying displease crowds and making lots of runs please crowds and therein lies a miasma of good and bad switching places and creating a redemption narrative for Steve Smith. To be honest, I think people fundamentally like Steve Smith and wanted a reason not to boo him any more, just as they probably always wanted a reason to boo David Warner. We’ll see how much technical virtue erases moral stains when he or Bancroft make a century.

Redemption II

Speaking of slow doom, I never saw anything as depressed, as depressing, or as slow, as Peter Siddle walking off the SCG field after being given out on the fifth day of the fifth test in the 2010-2011 Ashes, a series that England won 3-1. Siddle, Smith and (briefly) Khawaja are the only players in the current team who endured that horror season. Nothing would make me (and probably him) happier than if he saw out his Ashes career out with an away win. Hat-trick optional, but most desirable.